So much for that theory

I am not happy. I spent $29 on diagnosis and $70 on a new main board for my desktop system and it wasn’t the main board after all. That means it must be the CPU that died. That’s annoying because the CPU would have been only $60.

At least I think I know now what happened to the system. Builders are supposed to put thermal paste between the CPU and CPU cooler to make sure that heat moves quickly to the cooler. Well, the jokers that built my system didn’t use any or didn’t use enough to count. I expected to have to wiggle the cooler to dislodge the existing paste. However, when I unlocked the cooler, it fell off, and there was no sign of any thermal paste. So the CPU has probably been running hot the entire time I have owned this box. I know I bought a low-end system, but lousy build quality was not one of the compromises I expected.

I need to figure out what to do here. The one thing I am sure of is that I will never buy anything else from the company that built this box.